It’s a dumb question maybe: Do we really make genuine, 100 per cent proof political cinema? After watching Madras Café and Satyagraha, that’s what I asked the stalwart filmmaker Shyam Benegal on the sets of his under-production TV mega-series, Samvidhaan, on the making of the Indian Constitution.

The studio set of Samvidhaan, at Film City, has been recreated with painstaking detail, complete with period-era fans and mahogany wood benches belonging to a bygone era. Great political leaders, who led the struggle against the British Raj, are being portrayed by unfamiliar actors at the multiplexes, but are delivering performances of amazing authenticity.
Benegal’s lieutenants, scriptwriters Shama Zaidi and Atul Tiwari, are at hand to ensure that there are no errors in pronunciation of dialogue or body language. And when an actor playing a character from Tamil Nadu cannot get rid of his thick Malayali accent, a search is on for a replacement.
By comparison, Bollywood star-studded political films rely heavily on the glamour quotient, besides employing the kind of dramatic licence which takes away from historical accuracy. For instance, Madras Café appears to be fashioned on the lines of the George Clooney thriller Syriana. And in Satyagraha, the staging of the fast-unto-death by Daduji, Amitabh Bachchan’s character of a social acivist — evidently inspired by Anna Hazare — wanders away alone in the helter skelter finale, his otherwise vigilant attendants conspicuous by their absence. Credible? Not quite.
Back to my question to Shyam Benegal, the answer is, “If you ask me, every film is political, disclosing the world view of its writer and director. In fact, although Manoj Kumar’s Roti Kapda aur Makaan is never spoken about as a film with strong political content, it advanced a plea for the basic fundamental rights of every citizen — food, clothing and shelter. You can agree or disagree with the style of songs, dances and melodrama, but you can’t deny that the film, made in the 1970s, communicated the point to a nationwide audience.”
Among the current crop of filmmakers, the seasoned auteur remarks, “Vishal Bharadwaj’s Maqbool and Omkara commented on the political state of the nation even though overtly they were adaptations of Macbeth and Othello. And Dibakar Bannerjee’s Khosla ka Ghosla as well as Shanghai have been critical of the realpolitik of our times.”
My contention is that there are no political films which dare to take on the ruling government party by name, or even the right-wing parties which have a communal agenda. At most, the attacks are on cartoon-like corrupt ministers and MLAs, all of whom are desperate to get re-elected in the next term, be it in Dabangg 2 or Satyagraha.
Venal politicians have merely replaced the smugglers and mafia dons of yore. To that, Benegal laughs knowingly, “A sign of the time perhaps… but live and let live. No filmmaker is at least shouting out from the rooftops that his is a supreme example of political cinema. The good thing is that even the big entertainers are sending out signals. Criticism, mild or vehement, is a must in democracy.”
And then, there is the issue of censorship. Films with even a hint of political content whip up controversies, don’t they? “Yes, ever since our independence, there has been a feeling of dread about any kind of criticism in our country,” Shyam Benegal agrees. “The good part is that something is better than nothing.”
He said it!